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Archive | September, 2012

“Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla […]

Do you bring your iPad into the kitchen to follow recipes? Or maybe you bring it out to the garage and fix stuff? My manager asked me how I use my iPad and I could only answer, “Well, I like to read PDFs and write notes in the margins. That’s my primary use.” And then […]

You know how you can write notes in an Kindle book? That seems to be Amazon’s propietary system for recording notes. Especially since Amazon doesn’t even use ePub files in the first place (they use mobi files). It would be cool if there was a way to publish a Kindle book with notes already in […]

I really want the experience of reading a Kindle book with someone else. If there is anyone reading a book on a Kindle, let me know I would like to read the book with you. It would be fun to share notes and highlights through the progress of reading the book. Right now the tools […]

Do you enjoy showing off your books? Or maybe you enjoy seing your shelves filled with books. While I do like my book shelves, I also find myself running out of shelf room for additional books. Enter eBooks. Readers are no longer limited by shelf space. You can own hundreds or thousands of books. But […]

Oh man. This has to be the most IRONIC book ever. Seriously. You expect me to buy a book about book cover design when your own book cover is looks like that? It’s sad that this book ranks #6 on Amazon’s Kindle store for design books. Seeing this awful book cover design is rather ironic […]

Are book covers dead? Check out Craig Mod’s “Hack the Cover.” It’s a great quick book. 39 pages (twice as long as his “Books in the Age of the iPad” and ten times as good). You can even read the entire book online for free. Or in Kindle format for $3.99. There are lots of […]

Many people post the same item to several social media platforms. A photo of a building might be shared on Facebook, twitter, and foursquare. When we post, we want to make sure people across all platforms see what we have to say. But for our readers who follow us on multiple platforms, it’s a bit […]

Goodreads has a poll asking about where you heard about the previous book you read. Here are the results: I voted for “blog post” because I heard about “Shape of Design” from Craig Mod’s post “Hack the Cover.” Although I had to think about it for awhile, because I read a bunch of books at […]

In email, you can mark emails as read. In Google Reader, you can mark posts as read. Why can’t we mark tweets as read? Why can’t we mark Facebook posts as read? I can understand why we can’t do this in Facebook. The developers of Facebook control the interface completely, so they must want us […]

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About the author

Hi. I'm Matt Maldre. I've been working in the syndication business for over 17 years. How do we create, read, and share? Honest and bold opinions on publishing and syndication in this weekly blog.
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1. Oh yes, I keep a paper notepad to write down ideas and diary entries. Every time at lunch, I try to write at least something. It doesn't have to be a lot. Even just a few lines. 2. You might find the flip phone more annoying in our current era. But who knows? Give it a try! 5/6. Yeah, it certainly seems like Star Trek had a lot more attention in the late 80s and 90s. Especially with tv series like Star Trek New Generation. And now Star Wars is getting all the attention. Part of that attention to Star Wars might be due to the long time where Star Wars pretty much fell off the map. When Star Wars started to come back, it had people a lot more excited, because of that draught. 7. I'm listening to Ghostbusters II now too. Oh man. Bobby Brown. His 1988 album "Don't Be Cruel" was one of the first CDs I ever owned! Man. I can even remember unwrapping it during Christmas that year. Back then CDs came boxed in really long packages, so they could sit inside the old record LP cases. 8/9. Where would you want your essay to be published? 10. Yes. More blog posts in this style. I will take blog posts of any style!

This makes me feel better about being a generalist. I often yearn to dive really deep into one area, to really master it, and have the sense of accomplishment. But your post here excellently explains the value of being a generalist.